So she wrote a civil letter of acknowledgment to Sir Mowbray,
informing him that the intentions of his great-uncle should be
communicated to the boy when he should be of fit age to consider
them, and that meanwhile she was obliged to him for pointing out
the procedure by which she might lay hands on the legacy bequeathed
to her in trust for her son, the income of which would now be doubly
welcome in view of his college expenses. There the matter rested,
and Mrs. Elsmere, during the two years which followed, thought
little more about it. She became more and more absorbed in her
boy's immediate prospects, in the care of his health, which was
uneven and tried somewhat by the strain of preparation for an attempt
on the St. Anselm's scholarship, and in the demands which his ardent
nature, oppressed with the weight of its own aspirations, was
constantly making upon her support and sympathy.

At last the moment so long expected arrived. Mrs. Elsmere and her
son left Harden amid a chorus of good wishes, and settled themselves
early in November in Oxford lodgings. Robert was to have a few
days' complete holiday before the examination, and he and his mother
spent it in exploring the beautiful old town, now shrouded in the
'pensive glooms' of still gray autumn weather. There was no sun
to light up the misty reaches of the river; the trees in the Broad
Walk were almost bare; the Virginian creeper no longer shone in
patches of delicate crimson on the college walls; the gardens were
damp and forsaken. But to Mrs. Elsmere and Robert the place needed
neither sun nor summer 'for beauty's heightening.' On both of them
it laid its old irresistible spell; the sentiment haunting its
quadrangles, its libraries, and its dim melodious chapels, stole
into the lad's heart and alternately soothed and stimulated that